


helios

by winluvr



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Iwaizumi POV, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25721245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winluvr/pseuds/winluvr
Summary: Hajime thinks it isn't too late, until it is.
Relationships: Oikawa Tooru/Sugawara Koushi, one-sided Oikawa Tooru/Iwaizumi Hajime
Comments: 1
Kudos: 59





	helios

**Author's Note:**

> hi, i tried writing an iwaoi fic yesterday, i'm not entirely all that satisfied but i hope you enjoy it!

_ “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” _

_ — Federico García Lorca _

Hajime looks at Oikawa Tooru like he is the sun.

The question that lingers in his mind is: How can one simply stand in the presence of Oikawa Tooru without looking at him like the universe orbits around him? The answer is simple. It is always,  _ always _ simple to Hajime. He doesn’t know when he started looking at Oikawa Tooru more than a friend that he has always had. He doesn’t know if he has ever stopped looking at him in that way. The answer to the question that is always asked but never spoken out loud: you cannot. You cannot  _ not  _ look at Oikawa Tooru, like he is the sun, setting you on fire and putting out the flames at the same time. You cannot  _ not _ look at him like he is the sun, encapsulating you in its warmth that always feels holy and swallowing you whole.  _ But you cannot look at him like he is the sun, because once you do, you might forget how to stop looking at him like anything else. _

𓆉

Hajime turns five years old and meets Oikawa Tooru from across the street, with his dark brown hair swept by the wind and a sugar sweet smile coating his lips, and discovers, amidst the scorching heat of the sun stretching out above them and breaking through the clouds, the first thing that becomes important to him. 

Oikawa Tooru had always been reckless, judging by his knees that are always somehow bruised, sharp elbows that seem to be fond of nudging other people in the ribs and the rubber soles of his mud splattered blue and graphite gray ASICs, although it was always in the way that seemed endearing to everyone around him, even to his mother who had bought him the said shoes for Christmas and now had to scrub the mud out of it, especially to Hajime who always longed to touch him.

“Iwa-chan!” Tooru called out to him one day, the name rolling like candy on his tongue, the tone of distress clear in the way he speaks. “I-I think I’m stuck!” The expression on his face paled as he attempted to pull out his own legs from the holes of the baby swing that was, as the name implies, clearly meant for infants that were smaller than himself. He beat on the sides of the swing with his fists as tears began to form in his eyes.

“Fine, Oi-chan,” Hajime said, the moniker falling from his lips before he knew it. “I’ll get ya outta there.” He sighed and stood up without even a moment’s worth of hesitation, abandoning the red bucket and the sand castle he had begun to form, sauntering over to where he was so he could help free Tooru from the swing set. 

“Thank you, Iwa-chan,” Tooru said, wiping the tear from the corner of his right eye.  _ I don’t know what I would do without you _ , he did not say that day.  _ Thank you for being my friend,  _ he would not say until a few years later. He had not been able to find the right words yet because he wasn’t able to read or write yet nor have an extensive vocabulary at this point, but the broad smile that spread across his face was enough for Hajime’s young, impressionable heart to skip a beat.

That evening, Hajime looked in their bathroom mirror to see several bruises, some barely even the lightest shade of red while the others were darkening to purple, forming around his knees and elbows. He blinked twice and wondered how he could possibly have gotten them in the same exact spots that the other boy had them.

𓆉

Hajime turns twelve years old and is invited by Oikawa Tooru’s family from across the street for dinner. The two of them played with Tooru’s dinosaur figurines and LEGO set while Tooru’s older sister stood in front of the stove, humming a tune Hajime did not recognize as she stirred baby potatoes in their cast iron skillet, the musky scent of soy sauce and honey thick in the air.

Oikawa Tooru had always had a sense of clumsiness to him, judging by the way his already bruise-covered legs always seemed to be stumbling down the floor, his hands that always knocked down glasses of water that his sister would set down on the counter to drink later and his Onitsuka Tigers running right into disaster, but it was always the kind of disaster that Hajime wanted in his life. It was the kind of disaster that he didn’t exactly ask for but wanted to live with and couldn’t live without.

Oikawa’s older sister, whose name Hajime had already forgotten, set the steaming plates in front of them. She sat down on the seat in front of them as she flicked her fingers across the screen of her phone. Hajime lifted a hand gingerly to reach for some braised potatoes and chicken wings. Tooru reached out at the same time and somehow their hands bumped together in the process as Hajime held a plateful of steamed rice and potatoes and  _ voila, _ it seemed to him like disaster and misfortune followed everyone around and they had made Oikawa Tooru their sole victim for the year. Tooru burst into tears when the sticky, black sauce had made its way to his plaid shorts. Hajime spent the day helping Tooru wipe honey and soy sauce off his lap with a wet tissue.

That afternoon, Hajime got dressed into clean clothes in front of their bathroom mirror and spotted a small burn on his wrist and yet another papercut, adding onto the collection of bruises he had already accumulated through the years. Hajime wondered what kind of life he was leading to have enough bruises for two people. 

𓆉

Hajime turns seventeen years old and invites all of his friends to eat at a restaurant just outside their school, while the golden rays of the sun hid behind the pearly white clouds, and discovers that Oikawa Tooru, with his hands that felt so soft like he had never washed dishes in his life and his smile that looked like it deserved the world and his haphazard hair that was always swept in all directions, was in love with someone else, and for the first time, he didn’t know how he should feel.

The sun stands one hundred and fifty million kilometers (and more, who even knows at this point?) away from home. Hajime had always looked at Tooru with the same cautious indulgence in which he looked at the sun in the morning the moment he woke up and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. When you’re standing from a safe distance, you can appreciate all the beauty of the sun. But when you get too close, close enough to be able to touch him, you’d feel your eyes sting and the nooks of your face start to burn. Maybe that was why Hajime always felt his hands being scorched with a fire that was almost as small as his faith when he stood too close. Maybe that was why he always felt like he had to pull away whenever he looked for too long.

His first thought:  _ Oh. _

“Happy birthday, Iwa-chan!” Tooru called out to him once he stepped outside his classroom, his trademark sunny smile spreading across his face. “Kou-chan and I got you a gift.”  _ Kou-chan?  _ The name drew a blank in Hajime’s mind. “You know, from Karasuno.” Nothing, still. “Mr. Refreshing.”  _ Oh, the pretty one with the mole.  _ He held the carefully wrapped present out. “My sister helped me pick this out. I got the same thing for Takeru so you guys could match.” The smile on his face grew bigger somehow. Hajime thought the sun was shining right across his face. “You know, he looks up to you.”

“Thank you,” Hajime said, taking the gift de. “Tell Takeru I’ll come over soon. I missed him.” He decided to ask the question that had been bothering him. “I didn’t know you were friends with Suga, uh,” he said, struggling to remember the name of the vice captain of the Karasuno volleyball club. “The senior setter.”

Takahiro put his hand on Hajime’s shoulder, startling him. “Hey,” he greeted, handing him something sloppily wrapped with teal packaging and white ribbon. “It’s from the two of us,” he said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Happy birthday,” he and Issei, who was standing next to him, said at the same time. “Have a good one. Who are we talking about?” 

“Senior setter from Karasuno,” Hajime said, the words sounding more of a question than anything. “Y’know.”

“Ah, Sugawara-san,” Takahiro supplied, gesturing to the part of his cheek where Sugawara had his mole. He added, “Pretty guy seemed nice. You know him?”

“He’s my friend,” Tooru said, sounding awfully like he was boasting. Hajime felt his heart maybe, just maybe, crack a little bit. He didn’t know why he felt like this when there was no reason to feel…  _ jealous _ .

Takahiro snickered. “I don’t know how someone like Oikawa could make friends with someone so... nice.”

“Aw, come on, Makki,” Tooru whined. “You’re  _ mean _ .” 

“He’s right, you know,” Issei said in defense. He and Takahiro always seemed to share the same train of thought. Perhaps it came with the package of being soulmates. Inseparability and all. “Kou-chan,” he said, gesturing with air quotes, “doesn’t exactly seem like someone who would willingly hang out with someone like our captain.” He smiles. “Don’t be a bad influence.”

Tooru swatted him with a vacant hand. “I could never!” he said, sounding appalled at the accusation. “Mattsun,  _ you  _ are the bad influence here!” He pouted at him.

Hajime smiled fondly, although he didn’t let it last for too long for Tooru to notice. “Trashykawa doesn’t even drink ‘cause he’ll end up getting drunk on the first sip,” he said. “I don’t think he would get the guy hooked on, like, cocaine or something.” Issei laughed at this.

Tooru harrumphed and took Hajime by the hand. His hand felt warm on his cold one. Hajime did not feel a shock of electricity go through his hand, but he did feel nervous, like it was the first time he had held another boy’s hand. “Come on, come on,” he said cheerily, leading the way outside. “Makki, Mattsun, stop talking about me now, it’s Iwa-chan’s day after all.”

His second thought:  _ I don’t want to lose you. _

𓆉

Hajime turns twenty years old and peers into the mirror the moment he wakes up, wincing as he puts a hand to his chest, an inscrutable scowl settling on the corners of his lips.  _ What the hell are these.  _ The red and purple bruises forming across his neck seemed to mock him.  _ Where the hell did these come from?  _ He glared at the mirror.  _ Who…?  _ The truth dawned on him, and maybe, just maybe, his breath hitched at the thought of Oikawa Tooru, with his perfectly gelled hair that gets mussed into a bed head and his lazy smile and glossed over eyes, sleeping in someone else’s bed.  _ When? Why _ ?

Hajime calls him frantically and the dial tone hums on the other side, ringing three times before someone finally decides to answer it. “Hi,” a sleepy voice says. Hajime does not miss the sound of Tooru stretching his arms out, the bed sheets rustling in the background. “Oh, Iwaizumi-san, this is Sugawara,” he greets, too cheerily for someone who seemed like they just woke up. “You’re looking for Tooru, right? Wait a moment, I’ll get him on the phone.”

In the background, Hajime can make out Tooru saying “I’ll talk to him later” in a hushed voice and Sugawara responding that he was on the phone right now. Tooru sighs, just loud enough for Hajime to hear. “Good morning, Iwa-chan,” he says through the phone, the moniker falling off his lips as usual, but now it sounded like an obligation of sorts. “What did you need?” 

Hajime goes silent for a while before responding.  _ He doesn’t sound like he usually does,  _ he thinks. “Where are you?” he says, before cringing at how much he sounded like Tooru’s mother. “Are you, uh, did you…”

“Yeah,” Tooru says nonchalantly, as if it was not a big deal at all.  _ But it was.  _ “So what if I did, Iwa-chan?” he challenges further. Hajime imagines him raising a brow.

“I thought this kind of thing wasn’t what you wanted.” Hajime’s voice cracks. He knew what he said sounded kind of silly. Childish, even. It sounds like he was trying to control Tooru’s decisions but he had never been good at words. He wasn’t sure whether the jealousy parted played out more than the good intentions part. He puts a hand to the love bites that were darkening on his neck, feeling like he was being set on flames.

Hajime hears Tooru take a deep breath. “Then maybe you didn’t know me as well as you thought you did.” He drops the call and at that point, Hajime feels tears sting the corners of his eyes, feeling like nothing but an idiot.

𓆉

Hajime looks at Oikawa Tooru like he is the sun. 

Growing up with Oikawa Tooru’s antics, so annoying and yet so lovable, so infuriating and yet so endearing, he simply could not help but fall deeper and deeper in love with everything he was and everything that he  _ wasn’t,  _ with everything he could do and everything that he  _ couldn't,  _ loving all of him when he was on top of the world and felt like the whole world was on his side and even until there was none of him left to have.

Hajime had always looked at Oikawa Tooru with the same longing reverence in which he looked at the sun. Maybe that was why no matter how close he was, no matter how easy it could have been for him to wrap his arms around him and hold him tight, he would always feel so far away, a stubborn prey he had always hoped to catch but never did. He wanted to have him so badly that in the process, he had forgotten to look at him as anything more than a boy. He was a boy with vast and immeasurable charm, a boy with golden smiles that felt like the sunlight filtering through window panes, but still a boy nonetheless. The question that lingered in his mind up until now is: How can one person simply stand in the presence of Oikawa Tooru without wanting him to see them the way they looked at them? The answer is, of course, simple to Hajime. The answer is that you cannot help but want him. You cannot  _ not  _ want him to look at you and aim his blinding smile at you.  _ But you cannot simply stand there and think that he will stay in the spot right in front of you. You cannot simply stand there and think there wouldn’t be other people willing to snatch him away from you. You cannot simply stand there and not take the chance until it is far too late. _

Oikawa Tooru was nothing more, nothing less than an abyss, a cesspool of a boy, deep and bottomless and profound and longing to be discovered, and yet Hajime had never found the right timing, the right moment until someone else swooped in and figured it all out before Hajime could even get close to starting.


End file.
